


Gilford Winfrey the Third

by MoonFlare427



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Abandonment, And White Fang, And it's probably because he's a wee bit loco, Angst, Angst for everyone!, Anxiety Attacks, Bad living conditions, Blood and Injury, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders Angst, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders is having an Existential Crisis, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders Angst, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders-Typical Violence, Daydreams, Deceit | Janus Sanders Angst, Deceit | Janus Sanders is Bad at Feelings, Depressed Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders, Gilford Winfrey The Third, Gilford Winfrey The Third is Remus's tapeworm friend, Hurt Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, I hope, I shamelessly reference the peak tier childhood books such as Wolves of the Beyond, I think its mild, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Injury, King Creativity | Romulus Sanders Has A Pike, Logic | Logan Sanders Angst, Logic | Logan Sanders is Bad at Feelings, Logic | Logan Sanders is a hypocrite, Lovecraftian Monster(s), Many mentions of various mushroom species, Mentions of Necrophilia, Mild Gore, Mind Control, Morality | Patton Sanders Angst, Morally Neutral Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Nightmares, Patton kept all of Thomas's stuffed animals and sleeps with them; what else did you expect, Remus climbs like a squirrel don't @ me, Remus has lots of friends., Strangulation, Terrible Wound Care, The subconscious is low-key high-key f-ed up, The tentacle snail representation of futility, Thomas Sanders Angst, Unsafe Drinking Water, Violence, Wolves, accidental injury, almost, cthulhu - Freeform, graphic description of a corpse, it's not very graphic, just implied, kinda it's kinda weird, this is how brains work, wound care
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27617881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonFlare427/pseuds/MoonFlare427
Summary: Hey, your therapist might as well be the past version of you, right? Even better if you're their therapist too!
Comments: 17
Kudos: 11





	1. Do your damn job, Roman

* * *

It’s almost 9 when he has to pull himself from his bed to keep an eye on the daydream he can feel pounding on the inside of his skull, like it’s an animal trapped inside trying to break out. Like Athena’s birth, bursting out of Zeus’ skull after he swallowed her mom.

He hasn’t vored anyone, permanently. Anyone he forced to appear in the mindscape would shortly disappear, pulled back into the imagination because he didn’t have the power to keep anything more manifested, and he refused to let any of the monstrous little darlings he kept in his room and across their part of the mindscape fade away.

Another pulse of pain from the animal in his head- he’s decided ne’s a tapeworm that got stuck up there, nir name is Gilford Winfrey the Third, and you _will_ refer to nim by nir correct pronouns- manages to draw his focus from his drifting thoughts- temporarily, anyway, he can’t ignore the screaming forever- to his alarm clock, which is actually working… somewhat.

The eyes read 16:42, but she’s still fast a couple of hours- she has small, spindly spider legs that you have to press instead of buttons. Last time he had touched them, he’d broken some, and she’d fled his room to hide. It had taken forever, and plenty of stillborn mice, to coax her close enough to even touch her, let alone pick her up, mend her legs to the best of his ability, and take her back to his room. Fixing the time display wasn’t nearly worth hurting her again. He instead settles for giving her a gentle stroke, running a finger down the fuzzy ridge between her eye displays just how she likes it, basking in her lovely purr/growl/screech for just a moment as he starts to sort the numbers in his head.

They’re swirling in his head, and he has to reach out and snatch the numbers and symbols to stick together, come up with an answer. It takes a second, but he finally manages to grab enough to start forcing calculations through.

The square root of 16 is four, but two to the fourth power also makes 16. That’s not important yet, so he skips ahead to the minutes. 42 is divisible by two, but also by seven. So, 21 plus six, 27. As a 45 degree right angle triangle, the hypotenuse would be 38.183767 yada yada, it comes out to 38 minutes and 11 seconds. Perfect. Then back to 16, which, minus 38, is -22. Divide by two, you get -11. 11 seconds, he already knew that, so he’d messed up somewhere.

It’s not a surprise, it’s _him_ after all, but the cold disappointment is still heavy enough to put a slight frown on his face, and he ends up giving himself a solid knock on the head for good measure, but he stops when he hears his clock’s soft coos, returning his hand to pet her again. Back to the beginning then, and he starts to retrace his steps. There- duh- it’s 21 minus 38, obviously, and a weak, manic giggle tears out of his throat, because he really can’t do anything right, but that’s not the point.

_Focus._

21 minus 38, so -17. One minus seven is six, but it’s negative, so negative one minus seven equals negative eight. Turn it positive, and that makes the time 8:38:11; eight hours, thirty-eight minutes, and eleven seconds.

Ah- and _this_ is where the second 11 comes in, 11 minus four, seven minus two. Because of course it had taken him five seconds to figure it out, he’s _slow_ and _useless_ and _wrong_ and…

So, the time is 8:38:16. He pulls out his battered phone, and ignores the red icon that screams low battery in favor of the time, barely visible on the cracked and glitching screen. Even so, he sees that he was right, and it’s a new sensation that manages to drag another hysterical laugh out of him.

8:38, just barely past the halfway mark, which means he can technically say it’s almost 9. Which meant he’d woken up at a semi-normal time, which would have meant he had a normal sleeping schedule, _if_ he had actually gotten any sleep. He knew he hadn’t.

Normally, he only really _had_ to be up during the middle of the night, when Thomas was deep in REM sleep, where the nightmares and weird, nonsensical dreams that he’d long ago taken up the task of watching over dwelled. Creativity, the real one, was in charge of the calmer dreams, the ones Thomas would actually remember when he woke up. And Thomas’s daydreams, for the most part, though every once and awhile he got to contribute something to them.

It was a far cushier job than his. Barely any fights, and they were almost all scripted. Injuries hurt less, and they were nothing that could prevent the hero from sweeping in at the last moment. And the fights were fair- that was the one that stood out to him most- if only because there was truly only one villain and a slew of minions who were nothing but fodder beneath Roman’s sword, even when they swarmed him. And Roman never died, because the hero _always_ won, and wounds never stuck around or hampered him.

Roman never had to wait for ages for even the smallest scrapes to finally close. Roman never got sent alone into fights he couldn’t possibly win. Roman was never littered with scars and wounds, he always healed beautiful, his skin a blank canvas. Roman was never stuck in his room as his charges ran rampant and got into trouble that he’d be blamed for after he’d finally resurrected, once his room finished stitching him together, metaphysical atom by metaphysical atom. Roman never had to fight for the smallest scrap of recognition just so he could ward off the stabbing pain of being repressed so much he could barely hold his body together.

No, Roman was loved, Roman was perfect, Roman was useful, Thomas needed Roman, Thomas listened to him, and yet Roman still couldn’t be bothered to do his damn job. One insult, one comparison between him and his blood, and he fell apart, retreated to his room and left _him_ to do everything while Roman got all the credit.

It’s infuriating, and the brief flash of rage shoves his shreds of focus to the side and fills his head with angry shouts too loud to make out the words of. He winces, tries to cover his ears with his hands, but it did nothing, it never had. He can still feel his eardrums getting blown out, strong enough that when he gives up and brings his hands back down, there’s dark blood streaking across the palms.

So instead he waits, stands still as he can until he wrestles control back. He didn’t have the time to let the thoughts out in the imagination, not when he had things to do, monsters to supervise, daydreams to monitor.

And it’s not really fair, anyways, to blame Roman for not wanting to be compared to him. And he knows that Roman is insecure, that Roman doesn’t see how much the others value him, he’s seen the aftereffects in the imagination when he ventures onto Roman’s side. Another thing that he does wrong. Another sin for the counter, though he’s sure that he’s overloaded the system.

His clock is watching him, he finds, sadness in her eyes that _almost_ obscures the 16:50 that sits there. She lets out a soft coo, and he gives her another couple pets between the eyes as he digs a treat for her out of his pockets.

She’s quick to take the peace offering, tucking the pinky mouse into her mouth, but it doesn’t banish the sadness. He sighs, presses a gentle kiss to the ridge, but he really _does_ have to go, and so he turns away from her pleading eyes to sink out, pushing past Roman’s borders and into the home of daydreams.

* * *


	2. ExCuse me, I have exclusive rights to the mental breakdown tree!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are finally happening!

* * *

It was strangely… well-constructed, for a daydream that had been left to its own devices. A peaceful meadow with a gently sloping hill, a single tree perched at the top. It was surrounded by what would have been a vibrant forest, if not for the bleached, faded look that coated the entire scene, from the far-off horizon to the flowers in the empty field. 

It almost looked like someone had tried to make ghost leaves while they were still on the trees; the chemicals had spilt all over the stupid little storybook setting, sucking out the color and warmth. It’d look much better with skeleton leaves, maybe even real skeletons, former victims of the forest’s hunger that sprout off the trees and drop down to stalk passers-by.   


That’s far too much effort to waste on something that would disappear as soon as Thomas encountered something he actually needed to pay attention to. No, he can use that scrap of his dwindling power in his own forests of the dukedom. Instead, he can do something far less energy-consuming that will also shove the persistent thoughts to the side. 

So, having decided on his course of action, it takes little more than a wave of his hand to shift all the leaves into skeletal forms. It’s like he’s stripping them- so _ meone’s done it with a plant, Tho _ **_mas should_ ** _ - _ of their skin, like a botanist Ed Gein. He should make a suit out of the leaf skins and cosplay as a bush. Which would just be a ghillie suit that decomposed. Sexy~

The leaves are left white as bones, and it makes the wood seem darker in comparison, a startling contrast to the newly fleshless treefingers. It looks like a group of slowly rotting corpses, the calcium nuggets left exposed as scavengers picked off the meat.

It only lasts for a second or so, before the world glitches back to normal, leaving him staring at a normal, boring forest. 

That’s not how daydreams work. He may not be an expert on daydreams, but he knows how they  _ work _ . They were supposed to be fluid, following channels formed by suggestions and even things Thomas saw in the real world. It couldn’t just reject input like that, it was a raging river; just like the Chicago River, it took a lot of willpower, some backstabbing, and a whole lot of explosives to reverse it and send raw human sewage flowing into someone else’s water source. 

In fact, the only one who could change the flow of a daydream, instead of just stopping it, was Roman. And Roman hadn’t contributed to a daydream in  _ forever _ .

Or a couple of days, but time wasn’t really his strong suit. 

There’d be more chaos if this was Thomas’s final vision before his early death. If Thomas had been drugged or was choking on carbon monoxide without even noticing. After all, Thomas held strong to TV, and his last sight before death would be a classic rerun of his life story, or maybe even some nightmarish preview of what waited on the other side. He was hoping for the latter, it’d be infinitely more entertaining than something they’d all seen before. 

No, Thomas wasn’t dying, and he manages to tune out the small voice that sounds suspiciously like a minuscule Virgil whispering  _ You don’t know that _ . He gives the tiny emo to Gilford, a treat for nim keeping him somewhat on track. Gilford decides to use Virget as a pillow instead of eating him, a pleasant surprise that comes with lots of tiny grumbles until Virget concedes defeat and accepts his fate.

Intrusive thoughts don’t mix well with focused and controlled deliberations. In fact, they mix very, very poorly. He can tell from the way his brain feels like someone shoved gravel, ice, mayonnaise, and a whole pomegranate into a blender. He can almost hear the desperate whirrrrr-ing sound, but he forces the thoughts and feelings away when Gilford gives him a sharp poke to whatever is left of his frontal lobe, slicing through the folds and the grey matter to turn the blender off and dump the sad remains in a fire. Rest in peace, Samantha Jorkensensensendottir, a trusted blender for many years until her untimely death. 

Gilford, having thus advertised nis thoughts on him standing there trying to puzzle out the wonders of the mind for the rest of the daydream, returns to cuddling with Virget, who was apparently more content with being a tapeworm’s teddy bear than he’d expected. The smol boi- Virgil always hated when he called him that, but it wasn’t  _ his _ fault that Virgil was so damn short- had started complaining when Gilford had gotten up to deal with Samantha, but had finally shut up when Gilford curled around him again.    
  


Adorable.

He shipped it.    
  


He briefly wonders if Virgil would be annoyed at him for shipping a tiny version of him with Gilford the Protector, but when he gets a resounding  _ Yes! _ in response from Virget, he instead decides that he really should plan Samantha’s funeral, for once he’s back in his duchy. The party is sure to be wonderful, enough alcohol to kill two-thirds of his capital city and at  _ least _ three new outbreaks of the current plague. Maybe he could arrange a parade of zombies, or a gladiatorial fight. Maybe  _ he’d _ be in the gladiatorial fight. Whichever of his people bests him can eat him. He’ll regret it when he’s reforming, sure, but it’ll be fun until then!

Fun comes after doing everyone else’s job. He has to deal with this daydream, first. Which seems an easy job- no enemies that he’s seen so far, no people, just some faint bird chirps and the rustling of leaves. And it seems capable enough to keep itself together, so maybe he could finally work on getting the weighting of his Gáe Bulg right. Maybe he could have someone kill  _ him _ with it, during the games tonight. 

What if someone hit Thomas with one? 

Would he die from shock when it hit, or from blood loss later on? Could modern medicine heal him, if someone found him quick enough? What if he underwent a long surgery, carefully pulling all the spines out, getting someone else’s blood pushed into his veins so that he could pull through, until he woke up, and was cursed with pain from the extensive nerve damage until he died? What would happen when he passed out, or when he was put under? Or when he died? The sides would all die,surely, but  _ how _ ? There were so many options, and he’s falling down a spiral and he’s distantly aware of his lungs burning in his chest but  _ he can’t breathe _ -

He’s not Virgil, and he’ll thank his brain to remember that. But it does work as a reminder that he really does need to let the thoughts out soon, because they only do that when they’re crammed too tightly inside of him. That’s a future him problem, because current him has a Gáe Bulg to balance, a daydream to supervise, and a tree to sit under while he does both. 

A tree that seems to already be occupied, which is rude, considering it’s the only mental-breakdown-time tree in the daydream, and whoever this figment of imagination is could scurry back over to whichever side they belonged to, instead of stealing  _ his _ tree. 

Rude.

Maybe now would be a good time to check how bad the balance really is. 

* * *


	3. Aw fuck I can't believe you've done this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And here we are finally getting into some juicy plOt  
> Y'all prob know who this is  
> Or do ya?

* * *

He doesn’t quite understand why the realization that they’re crying makes it feel like Gilford slithered down his throat to his heart and started squeezing it. Another pulse in his head shows that Gilford hasn’t moved, but there’s still something hard in his throat that makes it impossible to swallow, and he can still feel pressure on his lungs and his heart. And they look like one of Roman’s, they’re not his, he shouldn’t  _ care. _

He does. 

He’s confronted by the fact he has no clue what he’s supposed to do in this situation. Comforting people isn’t his thing. Especially not kids.

  
Or- ‘kid’ might be a little strong. They’re young, sure, but they’re in their early teens, at least.

  
_We always were older than Thomas, everyone was._

That’s an odd thought, it doesn’t line up with the rushing waves in his head. It sticks out, like a rock that shifts the current, the one you get dashed against, breaking bones and squishing organs. It doesn’t make sense.   
  
When has anything?

He’s got a crying kid to… do… something, with, he doesn’t need an existential crisis right now.   
  
So, how do you calm down a crying teenager? It’s certainly not in his jurisdiction. It’s Patton’s, as much as he hates to think it, so the obvious question is, “What would Patton do?”

_ Laugh, joke, te _ **_ar you apart and shove the broken pieces to the side choosing only the prime piece of mental flesh to keep around and letting the rest of it rot in it’s own thoughts-_ **

He knocks on the trunk of the tree, sliding down to sit at its base, trying not to jolt when the kid starts and spins around, fixing a wide-eyed stare on him. He offers what he hopes is a calm, collected smile. Judging by the way they flinch, he failed. But they give him a weak grin of their own, using a sleeve to wipe tears off their face, which is close enough to success for him. 

Now he just has to say something.

...His mouth is unbelievably dry. 

He’s beaten to it by the kid, who flushes a bright red and scrambles to get up, brushing non-existent dust off his clothes. 

“I’m- um- I-I’m sorry, I didn’t think anyone would be… here. It’s-it’s really out of the way, I didn’t realize someone lived nearby.” The kid’s eyes dart across the horizon, landing back on him, looking for the world like a criminal trying to get out of a talk with an officer before they realize they’ve got a warrant out on them. “I’ll just… go.”

“You’re fine, kid. I don’t own the tree, and I sure as hell don’t live here.” It’s weak, some of the worst dialogue he’s ever said, and dry as hell. Then again, it’s a first read. The kid doesn’t seem to notice his shitty delivery, judging by the confusion that floods their gaze. 

“Wait, how- Why are you here, then? There’s nothing here.” They shift their footing, and he notices they’re staring more at his sash than at him. “They aren’t supposed to leave the town…” He’s pretty sure he’s not meant to hear the last part, judging by the way their eyes are slightly clouded. They blink, looking back at him with a facade of power and self-control that’s probably supposed to intimidate him. 

“How did you get past the borders?”

He smirks, ignoring the fact that it’s inhumanly wide be _ cause he’s br _ **_oken, wrong_ ** \- in favor of wiggling his fingers at the kid, letting the space between them fill with green sparks and swirls. 

“Magic.”

He’s rewarded with a look that could define bewilderment. He relishes in it- it’s not quite the disgust that normally meets his contributions, and so it’s fresh, a new form of acknowledgement that feels so much better, manages to soothe the frayed edges of the thoughts just a bit. It doesn’t last nearly long enough- it’s cut short when they start pacing, muttering words he can’t quite catch. 

Something about impossibile and sentient, if he caught it right. Impossible, that’s him, and he’s not quite sure what the sentient part means- Roman’s creations can barely think, so this much deliberation from one of them instead of just attacking him is refreshing. Maybe Roman’s trying something new.

He’s been watching them- he should probably figure out what their pronouns and name are, it’s annoying to only call them… them; at least give him a nickname, something to slot into the spaces so it’s not so damn uniform and boring- for at least a good minute before they spin around, giving him a glare that would have been intimidating if not for the fact that they look like a petulant baby Thomas. They look… just like Thomas, when he was younger. 

_ When he was whole.  _

“What are you, and why are you in my kingdom!” In his opinion, the pike pointed at his face like a bayonet is hilarious, and therefore it’s  _ definitely _ the kid’s fault he starts laughing hysterically, because it certainly took long enough. It’s the kid’s fault that he grabs the sharpened blade at the top, the part aimed directly at his eyes. It’s also the kid’s fault that he tanks it down and towards him, until it’s touching his stomach- just to the side of any important organs, he’d hate to die too quickly, bleeding out is much more sophisticated- as blood starts to drip down his now mutilated hands as he gives them a deadpan look and says, “If information is what you want, it’s best not to go for a killing blow first. 

He’s more surprised than anything when the kid lets go of the shaft and stumbles backwards, tripping and landing on their ass. He blames that, and the blood that slicks up his hands, for his grip on the blade slipping. So when it lands right where he placed it,- just above the hipbone- the weight of the shaft and the hammer-like tip below the blade forcing it through skin and- he needs to refresh his anatomy apparently, because the blade is long enough to cut through a part of his stomach and a good chunk of his large intestine- organs until it hits the bone of his illium, making a small cut on the ridge that leads to a couple of cracks, and glances off, leading to a much smaller cut that’s perpendicular to the first before it stops moving, he just stares at it. 

The kid doesn’t move. 

There’s so much blood, and he swears he can already feel the acid starting to attack the flesh. 

The kid screams.

He  _ really _ fucked this up, huh?

* * *

  
  



	4. Ah yes this is going well

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens when two idiots who aren’t okay in the slightest hang out?
> 
> A forest fire and brotherly bonding, apparently

* * *

As much as he loved the sound of screams, even he had to admit it got annoying quick. And Gilford seems to agree, because as soon as the kid started screaming, ni started _assaulting_ his brain. If it wasn’t for how deliberately painful it was, he would have thought ni was having some sort of seizure. 

And that was the _only_ reason he was trying to calm the kid down. After all, he was _dark_ creativity- he had no conscience, no guilt, and absolutely no regrets. It was just annoying and painful, and it didn’t remind him of Patton or Roman or getting shoved into the pitch black and being alo _ne and cold it’s so cold i’m sorry i’m sorry i’m sorry_ \- 

But calming down the kid would sure be easier if he could fix the damned cut. He had no clue when he’d spent enough power to make fixing a single slice impossible, it wasn’t even that bad. It was honestly ridiculous, why pull a weapon on him if they weren’t prepared to use it? And why was one of Roman’s so upset about hurting him? Roman’s guards and soldiers had killed him plenty of times before, and even civilians had never been afraid to take a shot at taking him down.  
  
  
Maybe he could think about it once Virget and Gilford stopped making his brain into a mushy soup. At least the screaming was gone now. A choked gasp from the kid who was now, somehow, in his arms draws his gaze back down. They’re crying again, stammering something about how sorry they were.

  
  
Would covering it help? It was worth a try, so he pulls off his jacket, followed by his shirt. It takes no time at all to tear it to shreds and start wrapping it up, and while it doesn’t staunch the bleeding, it covers it up well enough. You can barely see it when he pulls his jacket back on, which hides the fact the green fabric had already turned red.

  
  
“Hey, I’m fine. You didn’t do anything wrong, kid. It was just an accident, I’ll be fine.” He has to force the words out- it takes everything he has not to start joking around, and he knows that’s not gonna help- but they feel _wrong-_ they’re not his. He hates it. 

It achieves the desired effect, though, as the kid’s tears begin to slow and they look up. He tries his hand at another smile, and they don’t seem as distressed by this one. He sees their eyes dart to his side, and when it seems more or less fine, almost no blood, they visibly calm down. They wipe tears off their face again, and just like that they’re back to awkwardly staring at each other. This is getting ridiculous.

He grips the trunk of the tree, pulling himself to his feet before offering them his hand. Pain is stupid, after all. And kinky. He’d be fine. They hesitate for a good couple of seconds before they accept it, and he helps them up.  
  


“Let’s start over, huh? At the beginning.” _Adam and Eve bought..._ He forces the opening notes of his song out of his mind- he doubts that would be an effective method of fixing… whatever the hell one would call this interaction. “Call me the Duke, if you please. He/him, but whatever you want works. You?”

The kid’s eyes go fuzzy with confusion when he says his pronouns, and he forces the frown to stay off his face. What was Roman teaching his people? He debates going back and telling them his name, too, but he’s a fan of equivalent exchange, and unless he knows theirs, they won’t know his. He’d had enough of surprise reveals he hadn’t been in on, of not knowing anything. 

“Y-you don’t know me?” 

Wow. Rude. He didn’t have the time to memorize all of Roman’s mindless little pawns, thank you very much, so he just rolls his eyes and sighs, his hands on his hips.

“If I knew you, I wouldn’t be asking, ya diva. Pride is deadly, you know. Name and pronouns, dear worm.” God, that look is almost enough to get him to burst out laughing. Whoever this is, they’re delicious. 

“I-I’m... the King. He/him, I guess?” 

That’s… new. Roman’s was the only kingdom on his side of the imagination, or at least the only one that was fleshed out enough to have a king. And it didn’t even _have_ a king- Roman insisted on being the prince. Did Roman really make a new kingdom instead of doing his damn job? 

And no name. It’s fair, he supposes, he didn’t give him his name. He doesn’t try to hold back the harsh giggle that causes Kingsley to jump. Him his. Why is this fucker so damn familiar? 

It’s his own fault for opening his mind to thoughts. He hadn’t really meant to, just a simple question that needed no real answer, but they’d been waiting for so long. They were trying to help, in their own, idiotic, counter-productive, ruinous way. And that was why he had to let them answer questions on _his_ terms. He didn’t remember when he last had. Of course they were eager to jump out at every opportunity. He’s been himself for long enough, surely he can’t still be this stupid? But no, he opened the gate, stood on the bridge, and now the hordes are coming at him, he’s Horatius. Except he’s not strong enough. No, he’s far too weak to be anyone’s saving grace. They stab him, knock him to the side, and rush past. They take his barely breathing body with them. It’s a show of power, and he’s weak so he’s the victim. Their hands are ro _ugh it hurts i’m sorry and they grab me by the hair and i think i know what they want and i just wants it to stop so i follow through but they stop me and it’s worse it’s so much worse stop it please my eyes i can’t see i’ll never see again and i’m broken they’re just making the outside match the inside and i can feel it touch my brain_

_his fault his fault this is because of_ **_him_ ** _and i can’t control it he knows that i just want to go home i’m sorry don’t to_ ** _uch me_ **

_someone said something about control no control it’s hi_ **_larious, isn’t it? you should love this_ **

_i’m dirty and i’m broken and this is all i’m good for_

_it happens every day and it happens all over and even if it isn’t my fault it’s my damnation he can see my thoughts and he knows they’re wrong_

_am i lying if i say i’m a martyr? they’ll be in heaven without me, i take the fall for the sins of the man, even those in his head. call me a messiah and cast me into the pit, but i’ll never rise again_

_and the pit is everything. tartarus is filled to the brim. i’ll have to go back to the dark and the hands and no control and i just want to sleep_

The hands are back. They’re soft. There’s no real force behind them. He wants to laugh again but he’s already laughing, even though there’s no air in his lungs. He tries to inhale and he can’t because he can’t stop fucking laughing. The hands are pulling him up and some distant part of his brain realizes that he’s on the ground, crumpled like a body caught in an avalanche. 

Then his back is against a tree, and there’s a weight next to him. There are hands on his wrists, they’re soft but they’re still there and they’re touching him and he doesn’t know who it is and he hates it. They pull his hands away from his arms. Some weird choked gasp escapes his throat as he tries to pull away, and the hands are gone almost immediately. The weight next to him is still there, but it’s not as bad as the hands, it’s almost nice. One of the hands is back, on his shoulder this time. He moves back, but the hand moves with him.  
  
It doesn’t go further, it stays still, except for a rhythmic tapping. It’s nice, after awhile. And while it takes far too long, he can finally breathe again, too fast to be normal but now his lungs feel less like they’re being beaten with a cleaver. He can hear words- or, counting? The pattern feels familiar. 

_4-7-8, 4-7-8, 4-7-8._

When he’s completely back inside his own body, he pushes the hand off his shoulder. There’s an annoying pain in his side, and when he looks at his arms, they’re covered in scrapes and scratches. 

There’s a hand on his leg, and when he follows the arm with his eyes, he finds the kid. King. He looks… worried. But not worried by him, worried for him. This one’s strange. Their mouth moves, but he can’t make out the words yet. He must see the confusion on his face, because he’s talking again, slow and loud and deliberate. 

“Are you alright now?”

He almost laughs again, but settles for shaking his head no. He gets a sad smile in return.  
  
“Me neither.” 

He laughs that time, and to his surprise, King starts giggling too. 

He really likes this one. 

* * *

They end up talking for a while. Time moves differently in daydreams, and while it probably only lasts a couple of minutes for Thomas, he ends up talking to King for a couple of hours, until the sun is setting. They compare weapons, they discuss creations, and to his surprise, King isn’t immediately set off by his… everything.  
  
No, King just rolls with it, adds stuff of his own, and they end up messing around and creating creatures. It starts classic, with a Kraken, and soon it spreads to Venus Flytraps large enough to kill a man, monsters that came into dreams and corrupted someone from the inside, and a rabbit that only eats eyeballs. King does most of the actual creating process, it was almost startling how much power King had in comparison to him. But King still takes his input, adds it on, and it’s fun. It feels like acknowledgement, but it doesn’t sting like everyone else’s. 

He doesn’t hear from Gilford or Virget the entire time he’s talking with King. And King says that it’s nice to talk, that no one else likes this part of his creations. 

They both share stories of their respective lands. King’s world sounds remarkably like Roman’s, but a bit darker, a bit more exploration, and with many more choices. And then he talks about his world, about the dark pits and the vagabonds and the bandits and the murderers and the plague and the people. He talks about his general, about his nobility, about the cutthroat politics. And that’s about when he notices how King keeps looking over his shoulder, keeps looking for some assailant that isn’t there. Maybe he’s cursed- or maybe he’s just uncomfortable with what he’s saying. 

“Hey, ya’ll’a’ight?” A quadruple contraction, he can practically _feel_ Logic glaring at him, but it gets King’s attention. “Ya seem a bit distracted, Henry.”

King laughs it off, tries a verbal parry with a quick, “Nope!” He doesn’t bother answering, they both know King’s spewing bullshit. King eventually revists, offers a tentative answer of, “No, I love it, really! It’s so interesting, I wanna add some of that to mine… But isn’t it…. Wrong? L-like the two Barons who are married, shouldn’t it be a… a Baroness?” He doesn’t seem very _sure_ , more like he’s saying someone else’s words rather than his own. It’s familiar, like everything King does and says is. 

He doesn’t know why that makes him want to punch someone. No- he knows exactly why that makes him want to punch someone. Because it sounds like King had his own Patton, and he wished that fate on no one. And if King had his own Patton, then it made more sense why King had been so nervous about his creations, had asked so many times if it was okay, and god it made him angry. 

  
“Of course it’s not ‘wrong’, why would it be fu-fricking wrong?” As wonderful as King was, he kept flinching when he cursed; damn it if he wasn’t trying his best, but as intrusive thoughts he had a certain lack of a filter. He’s trying. It’s not going well, but King never got mad at him for it, and at least _trying_ to tone himself down was about the only payment he could offer in return. 

King gives him a weak smile and a shrug, offers up something about a friend, how he didn’t quite know why, and judging by how scared King looked while he was talking, he ended up not pushing the issue. King does the same for him, avoids pushing on what the hell had happened earlier, and they had ended up moving on to poisons and murder, what a good plot needed, how to avoid artificial tension in stories, story flow- he’s the first to admit that that’s one of his weakest points- and then it’s sunset. 

King is the first to stand, pushing himself to his feet. 

“Sorry, Duke, but I should probably go soon. Have to be home before dinner, don’t want anyone getting worried.” 

He took King’s offered hand, and King pulls him up, another stream of ‘sorry’s coming from his mouth when he stumbles and jarrs his side. He tells him point blank to shut up.  
  
“Are you gonna come back?” The question catches him off-guard, and when he shoots King a glance, he notices he’s got a worried look again. He doesn’t have time, really. He’s got too much to do. His job, Roman’s job, ruling his kingdom. But this was the first time in forever that he had talked to someone, someone who didn’t lie to his face or pretend that they didn’t hate him or was trying to fix him.  
  
And there’s only one right answer.  
  


“Pft- are you kidding me? You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried, King. I’ll be stalking your ass forever.” He smirks at King, and is rewarded when he beams back at him.  
  


King’s eyes go back to the sunset they’d been watching. 

“It’s pretty.”

  
“Could use more blood.” 

King smiles again, waves his hand, and now the sun is bleeding, bright rays of red dripping down across the clouds and the trees below. He reaches out a hand, ‘pressing’ it to the horizon right over some of the blood. It sticks to him, stains his hand, and he shows it to King with another manic giggle. King’s used to them by now. A drop of the thick liquid drips down and falls onto the grass, setting it on fire. He’s the one who stomps it out, because King is too busy staring at the glow on his hard. 

“That’s _awesome.”_ King reaches out his own hand and covers it in the sun’s leech-juice. Then King smiles and his eyes have a devious glint to them, it reminds him of Ro- of… Of nothing.   
  


“Simmmmmbbaaaaaa-” 

He now has the life-juice of the sun smeared across his forehead, courtesy of a king who’s barely keeping from bursting out laughing. He closes his eyes when it drips down over them- it gets in one of them and it burns. He forces his eyes open anyways, gives King a playful glare.  
  
“It’s fucking _on_ , heathen.”

* * *

They’re both covered in sun-juice when it’s over, and they may have started a forest fire.  
  


Well… they _did_ start a forest fire. King ends up on his knees from laughing too hard, and he starts running around with a flaming branch in his hands at some point. He’s also pretty sure he’s on fire, at least according to the acrid scent of burning hair. He’s pretty sure his side is bleeding again, but he doesn’t care. 

King snaps his fingers and there’s suddenly a storm, slowly pushing back against the spreading fire. It also douses his branch, but somehow his hair stays ablaze. 

King grabs his hand, it to pull himself up, then pushes him to the ground as soon as he’s standing, still laughing.  
  


“You’re- You’re an idiot-” It would have stung, if not for the fact that King was still laughing as he said it. He pushed himself to his feet, the pain bleeds away in the face of pure adrenaline as he feels more alive than he has in… years? 

He fakes a dramatic gasp, clutching his chest.  
  


“Oh, your words wound me so!” 

Their friendly squabbling is cut off when King glances back at the horizon, at the sun that’s almost completely buried in it.  
  


“I have to go... You’ll be here tomorrow?”

He laughs. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Kingsley.”

  
“Romulus.”

He blinks. “Gesundheit?”  
  
“Romulus- It’s… It’s my name.” He doesn’t know why his insides are burning, but it feels amazing. 

  
The law of equivalent exchange. 

“Remus.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, who trusted Remus to interact with a kid without setting a forest on fire?
> 
> Absolutely no one except for Remus.


	5. Bish you better not- STAHP

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's trying his best, but why would you need clean water to clean a wound?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning! 
> 
> -Semi-graphic gore  
> -Semi-graphic description of a wound  
> -Blood  
> -Appallingly awful wound care  
> -The Slime Mold Squad (mentioned)  
> -Vague description of a panic-attack because of abandonment  
> -Bad living conditions  
> -Implied fear of the dark  
> -Implied fear of being alone/isolated

* * *

He’d forgotten how lonely the quiet was. Or maybe it was how quiet the lonely was? 

Either way, the dark halls and silence of the place sends shivers up his spine, a feeling he’d thought he’d grown immune to. It reminds him of-

_ dark _

_ loud _

_ quiet _

_ blind _

-the feeling he’d had when he’d first started as keeper of dreams.

Normally the dark and quiet here was fine. It was the standard, after all. He’d never liked the way the silence felt, and he’d always fill it with as much noise as he could make; sometimes he couldn’t, and he hated it, but even then the silence had felt somber, not malicious.

Now, though, the silence was sentient, and it hated him as much as he hated it. It made his footsteps bounce off walls that should have muffled them, brought them back to his ears so he could hear it stalking him. It amplified every creak of the broken down house, and for a second he could pretend that it was just someone else, going about their day, even if they were following close behind him. 

He knew no one was there. 

The lights wouldn’t turn on. He pushes back a quiet sneer that asks if he’s still afraid of the dark. The lights had always been dim- when Virgil left, they’d started flickering, and changing out the bulbs had done nothing. Apparently now that it was just him, they didn’t work at all. 

Typical.

He wishes he could fill the space with glow worm mucus and bioluminescent algae. Or harvest anglerfish esca and illicium, and make a lustre out of them. 

There’s some mushrooms in his room he could use. They live on the logs he keeps for his slime mold clan. He’d actually kept them all accurate, had a list of their names and species somewhere. He had wanted to show Logan some day, that he could keep things accurate and real. 

He knew all of their names by heart now. Luci Diaz, she’s a  _ D. leucopodia _ . Fougue, ze liked to go by Sepsis. He couldn’t recall zir scientific name, but he did know ze was commonly known as a ‘dog vomit’ slime mold. Then Phoenix, a  _ P. polycephalum _ who used spivak pronouns, And of course, Vulf, the cutest little false puffball ever, even if they refused to admit it. 

He needed to get them some new logs. And transfer the fungi colonies to them, But first he could light up the halls. Get some spores from the dripping bonnets and spread them through the air like sparks from a wildfire. He could let the mycelia of the  _ Armillaria mellea _ sink into the walls, like they’re the veins of the house, the arteries, pumping to and from the unknown heart. Put  _ Mycena chlorophos  _ all over the ground, like blood on a field after a battle. And he could add a dead body! Spread  _ Laccaria amethystina _ over it that would look like they glowed purple, even though they only reflected light from the others. It would be his own little world, but  _ real _ , real in a way the imagination wasn’t, a whole new dimension! Just his, just his because Deceit was gone and he’d never have to turn it back, he could keep it as long as he wanted! Deceit was gone, and he wouldn’t complain about how he’d ruined it. Deceit was… 

Deceit was  _ gone _ . 

His name was Janus. His name was Janus and he’d never even told him. 

There’s water on his face. The ceiling must have a leak. 

He can’t swallow. There’s a lump in his throat and it feels like it’s growing. It’s a tumor, this is how he dies, choking on some evil from inside him. His sins coming to the surface. He’s a terrible brot _ her, terrible friend, terrible acquaintance, he’s a slut, he’s off putting, they  _ **_hate him, he’s broken and wrong._ ** _ He’s why Virgil left, he’s why De- _ **_Janus,_ ** _ left. _

There’s a new hole in the wall, and he tries to force himself to think about how he’s lucky  _ Janus _ isn’t here to get upset. It doesn’t work, and he leaves his morningstar in the hole, settles for punching the wall until there’s another hole, and another, and another. Then he steps back. He wants to leave, go into the imagination, anywhere with light, but he waves his hand and even though he can’t really see though the water in his eyes, it’s clear he’s still there. Something warm starts to drip down his hand, and standing is really just an absolute pleb move, he’d  _ much _ rather suck than get sucked, so he sinks to his knees and stares into the abyss. If something’s watching him, he’s sure as hell gonna be watching them back.

* * *

Maybe the middle of the hallway wasn’t the best place to pass out. But it’s daytime now, or at least he thinks it is. They had windows, but the only thing outside was a dusky gloom, the same as always, that maybe changed a few degrees of brightness with the time, but it was hard to tell. They’d-  _ he’d _ always just used clocks. He didn’t know if they still worked, there wasn’t enough light to tell. He should fix that. 

He’d love to go make his fungus wonderland, but he’s impatient, and he refuses to create anything when he’s not in the mood to make it right. First order of business was getting water, his throat was dry as hell. And he’d need light, probably. There were candles scattered all over the house, mostly his from when he’d randomly decide to try summoning a demon, and then Deceit would take them, and he’d pretend he didn’t know where they were, and they’d both pretend he couldn’t just make more. 

That didn’t matter. He tries to uncurl from the weird ball he’d ended up in on the floor. 

He’d forgotten getting stabbed. Well, he remembers now, at least. He opens his mouth to let out a string of curses when something on the wound or in it stuck, pulled, and refused to let him go any farther. Nothing comes out of his throat, despite his best efforts, so he settles for an angry huff. He really should have taken care of this last night. 

He pulls up his jacket, and it looks awful, but he’s seen worse. The skin around it is puckered, and it’s a bright red. There’s some blood leaking from it, probably from moving. It’s swollen as hell, and the red from inflammation or whatever disease he now had reaches at least an inch from the actual wound, it’s hard to tell. There’s crusted dry blood all around it, and on the inside of his jacket. He almost misses the torn fabric of his shirt that he’d shoved into it the day before. It’s murky brown, looks so much like the dried blood it’s impossible to tell them apart, especially in the dim light. The only tell is that a couple of bits stick up above the wound. He reaches out, grabs an edge, and pulls. 

He regrets  _ everything _ .

It’s like the fabric is fused with his flesh. The small tug he gives it tears off bits of healing skin and flesh, he can  _ feel  _ it, and even if he can’t quite see it, he can feel blood already welling up, puts a finger to it without touching the wound, and when he holds it up to the light, he can see it, dark red that almost looks black. He licks it off his finger, relishes the taste.

What does he do now? The normal routine when he’s been wounded enough he can’t quite take care of it by himself is to go annoy Deceit. Pop some jokes, wait until Deceit gives up and sighs and asks what  _ isn’t _ so important that he needs to interrupt Deceit’s work. Show him whatever happened, watch Deceit’s eyes go wide for a couple of seconds before he covers concern with disgust and pulls him to the bathroom to get patched up.    
  


Deceit was  _ gone.  _

He can take care of it. And as much as leaving it like this wouldn’t kill him, it would keep him from doing his job properly, and that’s just how he gets hurt more. Might as well take care of it.    
  


He sticks his fingers into a nearby hole in the wall and uses it to pull himself up, trying to not react when the fabric parts from his skin with sickening rips and cracks. He can feel blood, warm and thick, start to drip down from the wound. He  _ likes _ these pants, this is bullshit. 

He finds his way to the bathroom by pure luck. With said luck, he goes to turn on the lights, but God has cursed him for his past hubris, and they don’t work either, just like the rest of them. Which is annoying. He instead ghosts his hands over the drawer handles until he finds the right one, pulls it open, and is rewarded with a wealth of candles. He pulls one out, digs a match out of his pocket, and strikes it on the counter. Thank the gods Thomas watched so many cartoons. He lights the candle. Pulls another out, and lights that one too. He gets another two lit before the match burns down to his fingers and he reluctantly lets go. He sets his four saving graces up so the room is as bright as he can get it with candles. It’s still dim, the light is inconsistent and flickers. It’s enough for him. 

He grabs the glass next to the sink, sides it under the faucet, and turns it on. God grants him mercy, and the glass fills. He lets out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, because there was that nagging thought that nothing in the house worked, that the deterioration didn’t stop at the lights. It’s clearly  _ wrong,  _ so he brings the glass to his lips, and tastes the best water he’s ever had. 

It just so happens that the best water he’s ever had tastes suspiciously like rust. He swirls the glass like it’s wine, holds it to the candle, and despite the less than optimal conditions, he can see it’s not clean. It has a dusky orange tinge, and maybe something floating in it, he can’t really tell. He takes another sip.

He can live with it. 

He chugs the whole glass, then another, and a third, and finally his throat feels less parched. Then he pulls off his jacket so he can better look at his side, because it’s starting to throb in time with his heartbeat.

It looks worse in the light. He can see how far the red’s really spread, which is basically his entire torso, as far as he can tell. It’s also  _ really _ swollen, which sounds stupid, but the flesh nearest the cut looks almost white, like he’s lost all his blood and there’s no more left to send there. Of course, that’s hard to see under the dried blood. That has to go first. But that meant he had to pull out the fabric.

Another tentative tug just leads to more blood, and water-  _ not tears _ \- that floods his eyes and blurs his vision. He manages to force his throat shut before he makes any noise, though it’s not like anyone would hear. That wasn’t going to work. 

He wiggles out of his pants, and curses himself for wearing something so damn tight, because every time he shifts his legs it sends a bolt of lightning to his side that stops his chest and his heart. Soon enough they’re off, though, and he tosses them to the side. He tests the water on the tub, and it works too, so he moves a candle to give him light and grabs the cup and a couple towels. The tub begins to slowly fill with lukewarm water. It’s just as dirty as the sink. He can’t bring himself to care, so he sits on the edge of the basin, puts his feet in the water. Then he fills the cup with water and pours it just above the slice, so it flows down through it instead of falling on it. 

It stings, more than he’d expected it to, and he almost drops the cup. A poke to the fabric proved that while it’d softened, it was still very much stuck to the wound. So he wets a towel, starts cleaning the blood off, trying not to press too hard. And then he fills the cup again. Cup, towel, cup, towel, his own little ritual that he repeats for what must have been ten minutes before he feels comfortable enough to try again.    
  


It doesn’t feel loose enough.

It’s as good as it’s going to get.    
  


He takes a deep breath, holds it, and yanks. His arm jumps out of his control, he curls in on himself even as he tells his body to stop, his hands go to the laceration and start clutching it, which just sends more pain bolting through his limbs which makes him grab harder and he’s stuck in a loop-  _ so we’re stuck in a loop we’re stuck in a loop so we’re stuck in a loop _ \- the words don’t stop so he sets it to rave music in his head and forces his hands to grab onto his thighs instead. Breath in, out, even if he just wants to stop breathing altogether because he  _ swears _ it hurts when he inhales. At least it’s over with, now. He grabs a dry towel, presses it to the bleeding as tight as he can without dying, and waits. 

It’s covered in blood soon enough, so he grabs another rag and tosses the other into the water. And then it happens again. And again. And then the blood is slow enough that even though he can see it slowly oozing up, he doesn’t need to constantly have it covered. The rags are small, so he lies to himself and says that therefore he really hasn’t lost that much blood, he’s fine. 

It’s still fucking there. Hanging on by a strip, but still there. He slams his fist, the same one he’d beaten the wall with, into the hard ceramic that was the tub. It hurts, but he  _ chose _ that, he’d wanted that, and it hurt in a way he loved, so he did it again. Then he growled, even if it’s broken because his vocal cords refuse to work right, grabs it once more.    
  


Then back to the towels. 

  
  
He starts his ritual again, cup-towel cup-towel, washing off bits of dried blood that fell off to reveal fresh blood beneath, white skin and pink flesh that burned as he slowly scrubbed his skin. He’s mad, not sure what at, but he was, and he apparently decides the best way to deal with it is to attack the wound with the towel, push on it til the pain fades out to nothing. Then the cut is clean, and he moves on to another part of his body to try to get out the dirt that seems to constantly be a part of him, push off the blood from his latest stupid incident. And he finishes that part, goes back to the cut, and it has more blood on it somehow, dripping onto some other part of his body, rinse and repeat. 

As soon as he’s clean enough, he steps out of the tub, shaking himself like a dog as usual and freezing when pain reminds him he’s an absolute idiot. So he’ll do it  _ normally _ , fine. He grabs one of the larger towels from the wall with a huff, and he can also hear Deceit, snickering or serious depending on how annoying he’d been that day, how much work he’d caused Deceit to have to walk away from, telling him to  _ don’t _ grow up, you’re  _ not _ fine, you’re  _ not _ acting like a child. He’d always respond in kind, no matter what mood De-de was in, refusing to and pouting, and Deceit would scoff and leave him to figure himself out, or laugh and take the towel, help him dry off. 

Deceit was  _ gone _ . 

He’s not crying, it’s just water from his hair.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This dumbass didn't even use soap.   
> Idiot.   
> It ain't gonna heal quickly if ya ain't taking care of it
> 
> But soon we meet the SMS (Slime Mold Squad) and Remus is totally sane whatchu talkin bout?


	6. Well thanKs Thomas I'll just die then

In his professional opinion, even though nobody asked- _nobody would ever ask he should just_ **_shut up_ **\- whatever deterioration bullshit the darkside was pulling on him was stupid. Because apparently no electricity worked, which would have been fine by him, but he was actually hungry in a way marshmallow fondant stuffed in a tube and deodorant just wouldn’t quite satisfy. Because they hadn’t. So he’d gone to the kitchen, thrown open the fridge because there was always something in there, De-de knew whenever he tried to cook it turned into a shitshow, and left stuff that was easily reheated or just as good eaten cold, if his powers were being extra fucky with him. But, of course, one more time for the kids in the back:

Deceit was _gone_. 

And with him, apparently, all of his contributions to the darkside. Which included whatever food he’d left in the fridge.  
  
_if he left any_

_he never wanted to come back_

_why would he leave something for you?_

Which would have been okay. He wasn’t above eating raw food every once and awhile, he’d eaten worse and he could stomach just about anything, and frequently did. It wasn't as useful as an actually cooked meal, but it provided energy. However, the electricity was off, which again, he’d only been really aware of since today, and he was pretty sure it was fine before the daydream, which had only been a couple of minutes, and passing out for however long meant it was probably only late afternoon or evening. Now that he looked back, he knew it had started when Deceit left, but it had been rather slow, and he didn’t think he’d actually eaten anything since De-de left, not even his favorite snack, so the fridge could have been off since then.  
  
Either way, it didn’t matter, because everything in there had the sickly scent of rot. A level of rot that was unnatural, even if it had been off since De-de’s dear departure. And even he wasn’t jumping at the opportunity to eat that. Not when it looked remarkably like that ground beef still had it’s fur on, covered in mold as it was. He’s reached his limit for mind-bullshittery for the day, the year, in fact. So he shuts the door. 

The pantry’s in much the same shape, so he gives up on finding actual food and goes back to fondant and toiletries. It’s not the same. Sure, it _feels_ like he’s eating when he chomps on a nice bar of deodorant, but it never turns into actual calories, never gives him any energy. And most sides don’t need to eat. They have Thomas, and Thomas _gives_ them energy. Eating is just… something they do.  
  
But he’s not most sides. God, he’d love it if he was, if he could peel off his skin and become one of the others, become useful. But no, he’s the side that Thomas actively ignores and represses. And negative attention can fill a heart just like positive attention, but it can’t fill a stomach, and it can’t keep limbs moving. And if he could actually die, then he’d be happy to just not eat, die of starvation in his room. But he’s fucking cursed, and the curse’s name was Roman. Because they were part of a whole, and some weird Harry Potter bullshit Thomas had read where ‘one cannot die while the other survives’ apparently thought that meant as long as Roman was alive, he needed to be. He’d tried it, once, and all it led to was him dying, and his room forcing him back together. And it happened again and again and again and it was awful because there came a point where he didn’t have the energy to move even though he wanted to, desperately. It stopped being kinky as soon as consent was gone, and when he didn’t have the agency to end the pain himself, it became a nightmare. 

The mindscape’s food was like… forcing Thomas to give them energy without him even noticing it. It was healthier to eat for the others, but they didn't really need it. And eating was one way he could actually get energy without annoying Thomas or making anyone mad or getting punished. And apparently Thomas was somehow taking even that from him.  
  
He shoves another chunk of fondant down his throat, swallows, and turns to his alarm clock. She ran on electricity, too. Had a battery she could charge so she could wander from her cord and explore, but it didn’t last long. Trying to attach it to her without hurting her had been a nightmare and a half. She’d asked him for it for her birthday. He’d wanted to help her find a name, instead, but he couldn’t refuse her pleading eyes, so he’d warned her it might hurt, and found one small enough to not hinder her, but also not die every two seconds. She’d loved it, been so happy, and he’d apologized over and over for not thinking of giving her one when she was made. She couldn’t _speak_ , per se, but she’d quickly come up with her own form of talking, and any offers of finding a way to give her a voice were refused. She communicated fine in her way, and had quickly made it clear that she didn’t care, and didn’t want apologies.  
  


She wasn’t dead, just in her own form of hibernation. He already misses her presence. It helped keep the maliciousness out of his room. But his slime molds were there, and they did plenty enough to cheer him up on their own. They were also absolute rascals.  
  


He’d set up candles in his room. It wasn’t enough to completely light the place up, and plenty of it was still dark. Most of it was a friendly dark. A couple of spots were closer to that malicious aura that stalked the halls and the common spaces. But he was more preoccupied with making sure Phoenix and Sepsis didn’t crawl into a flame and die. Luci was helping him, at least. She was larger than she was technically supposed to be, all of them were. Larger and moved more and had personalities despite their lack of eyes and ears and mouths. He loved them. 

He was laying on his bed, the object of Phoenix and Sepsis’ obsession on his nightstand, in front of his alarm clock. If- _when_ they had electricity again, he would make her pick some sort of name. He tries not to giggle as Sepsis positions zirself right next to the glass of the little tealight, Phoenix slowly oozing eir way onto zir back. Luci bumps them from the bottom, but when that doesn’t work, she turns to him, and he can just _feel_ her roll her eyes at him and sigh. 

_A little help?_ Filled with sarcasm, she is.

“Sure thing.” He reaches out with the hand that isn’t petting Vulf, nudges the entire candle to the side so Phoenix can’t ooze onto it. He lays his hand palm down on the table when he’s done, and as expected, Sepsis crawls onto it.  
  
_You’re so mean, we’re just having fun!_

“Your version of fun is a little deadly, mate.”

Fougue huffs, and he raises his hand off the table so he can face zir better. Phoenix hitches a ride too, holding onto the side of his hand with a couple of eir tendrils wrapped around his thumb. 

“I forgot to ask ya’ll what you wanted.” Raised eyebrows all around. 

“Well, I need to pick out the logs _now_ , or they’ll be too fresh.” A nod from Luci, who’s already trying to predict what everyone else will want. Sepsis never does care, ze makes zir feelings clear by starting the long trek up his arm without a word. Phoenix takes advantage of his newly vacant hand by pulling eirself up. Ey nudges him, and so he slowly starts bringing his hand back to his body, making sure not to trip Sepsis up. Luci huffs, and he giggles, says, “The train’s all full, darling. I’ll pick you up on the next run, and we can have some fun.” He wiggles his eyebrows at her. She makes various slightly offended noises, and Sepsis and Phoenix burst out laughing, more at her than him- it’s a weak joke, a faint attempt at acting like himself. Vulf isn’t paying attention, melting into the gentle pets he’s giving them. 

This position makes his side ache. 

Vulf goes on the table with Luci, wines softly when he picks them up to move them, quiets down when Luci slots in next to them. He’s less gentle with Sepsis and Phoenix, a light toss for both of them in the direction of the headboard so he can roll onto his back. They both scream in delight, collapsing on the pillows as they giggle. He laughs as well, takes another bite of his latest tube. It doesn’t help fill the emptiness in his stomach, or the fatigue that’s setting in. But he’s not even gone a week yet, he shouldn’t be this exhausted already. His stomach doesn’t care what he thinks.  
  


\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He can’t tell what time it is. But when his chest fills with a familiar ache, completely independent of his burning side, he knows that Thomas has fallen asleep. Gilford springs to life as well, writhing around so violently that Virget leaps back from him with multiple tiny cusses. He pulls himself into a sitting position, muttering something about Gilford having to sleep on the couch, and presses a tentative hand to his side. It’s wet with what he can only assume is blood, and the realization he’ll have to clean it again drags a groan from him. Luckily, the molds are fast asleep on their logs, or at least not paying enough attention to him to notice. The candles have all burned out or been blown out by one of his ghosts after he’d passed out. 

He offers them a thanks, but there’s no response. There never is, they only come out when he’s asleep or not there. So instead he pushes himself to his feet, fights to stay standing when it jolts his leg. His arms burn now, too, and he’s reminded that he scratched them up during his… whatever the fuck. They’ll be fine. 

The mushrooms light up the room enough for him to find his way to the broken down closet. It’s almost empty, most of his clothes are scattered around the room on the floor. But it did have the armour Deceit had made him start wearing after the nth time he came back with wounds that had him die in front of Deceit, or led to to Deceit covered in his blood while De-de patched him up. 

He leaves it there. He pulls on a new shirt from the floor, squeezes the old one over his head so the drops of blood fall into his mouth, and presses his hand to his side, again. Bleeding out before he even gets halfway through a fight would be stupid.  
  
He forgoes washing it out again in favor of just swiftly changing bandages by the light of the mushrooms he’d placed in the bathroom. It’s not _good_ , his strong suit had never been healing or anything of the like, anyone could tell by the fact he couldn’t even summon something helpful. It’d always been Deceit, _Janus_. Even Gilford’s wiggles and Virget muttering in his ear couldn’t drive that thought away. He wipes the droplets of water off his face. 

The dreams pulling him into their realm is an achingly familiar feeling, rings of someone he _doesn’t_ care for anymore. He doesn’t. He’s angry, and ready for a fight, and he just wants to pulverize them. At least, that’s what he tells himself, and if Salazar was still there, he’d have laughed and quirked an eyebrow at him, asking just who he was trying to convince with that, whispering a reassurance that tastes so real in the moment but now he _knows_ , he knows they were all fake and just to get him to shut up.

It’s raining in the Subconscious. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who's ready for an attempt at action...?


	7. I can't say no to an offer like that

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nightmare time...?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OkAy so!
> 
> Mentions of Necrophilia  
> Implied/referenced Rape/Non-con  
> Mind Control, sorta. More like body control? It's weird  
> Descriptions of violence
> 
> I dO NOT ENDORSE Necrophilia!  
> Neither does Thomas!  
> And I'm not tryna say Thomas into dat!  
> It's... hard to explain, but consider the Subconscious as a collection of knowledge and thoughts that the brain is constantly rearranging and trying to make sense of in the background. So if you learned about something, it pops up as a nightmare. Does that make you into it? Hell nah, but ya listened to a true crime podcast and your subconscious went "yoinks this mine now, consider it *forever*"  
> So no, I'm not tryna say Thomas does or Thomas would.

It’s a new landscape, like it is every night. This one is a swamp, so familiar he half wonders if he’ll meet Yoda. It’s filled with fog, rain that falls slowly in fat drops. He already knows that it won’t affect them at all, none of the environmental hazards do. Nightmare powers, he guessed. He’s glad Thomas doesn’t remember these, the hellish things Thomas cooked up while sleeping. His presence alone was enough to make Thomas start to spiral, imagine if Thomathy knew what he’d made all on his lonesome. It’s weird that it skipped right to the fight. Normally it’s a round of common dreams first, like getting chased or teeth falling out. Like a first wave. Then a battle, then the battle continues as he starts to get dragged through the common dreams in the midst of a fight. 

Maybe they’re switching it up, another style to throw him off. Maybe they’ve changed, like every other aspect of his life has. He doesn’t know if he can handle that.   
  
No one’s appeared yet. Maybe some of the nicer dreams were still fighting with the others. The ones who weren’t quite PG enough to make it into Roman’s jurisdiction, but weren’t quite the average nightmare. He’s probably going to have to take care of Roman’s dreams too, after this, and he doubts they’ll take it well if he shows up covered in blood and beaten ragged, they hardly accept his presence at all. 

There’s a crack. Something’s in the trees, just behind him. They won’t come close enough if he turns now, so he stays facing where he landed, eyes falling to the soil at his feet. It’s covered in waterlogged grass, dead and wet and brown. His feet have sunken into the wet earth, and there are puddles all around. Some of the ground seemed more sandy, and he wonders if they put quicksand traps around him. 

A soft noise from behind him, someone landing on the wet ground. They’re moving closer, he can barely make out soft footsteps. The swamp is silent, other than whispers in the distance and wind in the trees, which doesn’t affect the fog at all. It’s warm and humid, his hair will be a mess after this, and sweat is already starting to form on him.   
  


They’re right behind him. 

He spins around, lashing out with his morning star as he does, and is rewarded with a whining keen. They’re not done for, even if he did get a good strike to the head, and blood, a sickly green he would die for with a purple sheen floating like oil on its surface, is dripping down their face. 

They’re a sex dream. But not one of the normal ones. He loved the normal ones. 

No, this was the sex dream that technically yes, does include sex, but you hate it and yourself every second. The kind that features something you learned some people are _into_ while you were awake and managed to push it to the side, and then it went to the subconscious and formed into one of these. The kind he was glad Thomas didn’t remember.   
  


Tonight, it seemed, something had reminded Thomas that necrophilia was a thing. This one had been strangled. They had a tell-tale ropeburn and bruising on their neck, those little marks from burst capillaries ranging red to purple all around their face. The whites of their eyes are red as well, completely, and the eyeballs look almost swollen out of place, a weird bubble-skin seeming to be the only thing keeping the excess of blood in the whites of their eyes from leaking. Their shirt was still on, one of the long sleeves torn off completely and the other torn to bits by their wrists. Their wrists were bruised too, and their fingernails were blue, deep blue, like the skin beneath the nails were bruised. They had scrapes from someone’s fingernails on their neck, and some had drawn blood. Their mouth hung open, still gasping for breath, drool and vomit dripping out of the corners. They have one sock on, and one shoe, but for some reason the shoe was on the opposite foot of the sock. They still had their pants on, pulled down to just above the knee, tripping them up when they tried to adjust their position. 

They aren’t here to fight him. They raise a hand, and he can feel something spread across his body, force his legs to move towards them. He’s stuck watching someone else control his body, like he is with all of these damn hellspawns. Intrusive, just like them, unwanted, just like them, too forceful and too rough and he just wants to get away, which must be how everyone else feels around him. They’re not so different, he finds the time to think, as his body drops the morning star and starts to the corpse. He hates it, the way it forces his body to curl up close to the corpse, fingers ghosting grey skin. The way he suddenly has a rope in his hand, wrapped around its neck as his voice purrs something he doesn’t want to be here to listen to. 

It shouldn’t be this hard to force it away. He can normally shove their presence out of his mind, fight, but it feels like he doesn’t have the energy to. He hates it. It hates him. He can’t blame it. He hates himself too. 

Everyone does. It shouldn’t be as sobering as it is, he already knew it, but it’s different now, because they hate him more, or they got tired of dealing with him. Even Deceit, who had promised he’d never leave, was gone. He should have seen that one coming. 

He’s laughing. He doesn’t notice at first. But when he’s done wallowing in the fact that he’s truly alone, like he always thought he would be, even when he was told he wouldn’t, he’s back in his own body, morning star in his hand, staring at a pulverized skull as tear- rain drips down his face and he cackles like he’s insane. In his mindless murder, he’d apparently hit his own hand with his morning star, the flesh torn up and he knows multiple bones will be broken when he checks; he’s more focused on the deep red mixing with that green on the ground, blending together to a brown that reminds him of something, _someone_ , from a dream. 

He steps on their chest, hears a crack that fills the hole in him just a little bit, for just a second. It does even less the second time, so he steps over them, picks a direction, and starts walking. They’ll make it worse if he doesn’t.

* * *

For not the first time, he curses Thomas’s inability to address his damned thoughts in the light of the day, when it was safe. No, Thomas had to hold it all inside until he’s out like a light, and makes it someone else’s problem. Specifically, _his_ problem. 

He’s really not in the mood to fight Cthulhu. 

Cthulhu doesn’t care.   
  


Cthulhu is one of the most annoying things here. Cthulhu is an acceptance of futility, realizing how little anything Thomas or any human did was. And Cthulhu was trying to drag him into some sort of mini black hole that only seemed to work on him. 

Right now, he’s clinging onto the trunk of a tree, holding on for dear figment-of--imagination. Some weird hell-hounds that had too many human features for dogs and too many dog features for humans were crowded around the base of it, trying to bite at his heels. He’s covered in mud and soaking wet, and somehow still too hot. He pushes himself up just a little more, trying to get onto a branch so he could actually do something about his current situation. A hound snags the tip of his boot, teeth and fangs that carried venom that wouldn’t kill him- barely- sinking into his flesh. 

He can’t hold back a sharp yelp, scolds himself for it, and kicks his leg until the animal falls off with a whine and a quiet snap. It doesn’t get back up, and its comrades fall on it, tearing open its flesh and going straight for its heart first. It gives him time to pull himself onto the branch, stare at the dripping blood for a few long seconds until he sees that Cthulhu had finally decided to move.   
  


Tentacles are slowly crawling through the forest, grabbing onto whatever they could reach and pulling a large… body behind them. Cthulhu’s body looked a bit like a teal and green blobfish, but had a foot like a snail on the bottom. Cthulhu used that, and Cthulhu’s tentacles, to move forward, leaving behind a trail of noxious slime that cuts through bone and flesh like acid, but won’t work on anything else. He used to cover arrows in it, shoot them at whatever enemies were in front of him to take them down for good, because normal arrows never seemed to do the trick.

He would have thought the wet ground that sunk under pressure would have slowed Cthulhu down, at least a little. He’d been wrong. Cthulhu glided over the ground, didn’t even touch it as Cthulhu meandered after him. 

He goes to jump into the nearby branch of another tree, but he’d waited too long and he’s sucked backwards by the weird gravity of the mini black hole. He lands on a pile of hounds, teeth and claws digging into his back and his stomach as he tries to pull himself to his feet. Something hits him right in the cut from the pike. He’s been ignoring it, for the most part, and has been moderately successful in that endeavor. Sure, it hurt, but adrenaline and fear managed to take care of that for the most part. This time, it doesn’t.

It leaves him gasping as the creatures below him scramble to their feet, leaves him curled up in a ball as Cthulhu gets closer and the hounds start to tear him apart, slowly, trying to shift him so he’s facing up and they can open up his chest and steal his heart.   
  


He doesn’t want to die like this _again_. 

He’s on his feet, by some miracle, walking on the foot that one of them bit- he’s probably getting so many bacteria in it, maybe he’ll get that flesh eating disease. He won’t live long enough to if he doesn’t _move_. 

He flings his morning star at Cthulhu, and it hits. There’s some sort of bubbly screech, he’s not sure where it comes from, Cthulhu has no mouth. Maybe when he gets sucked into that back hole, he’s being eaten by Cthulhu. Maybe that’s where the noise bursts forth. Either way, he’s not getting pulled anymore, so he kicks one of the hounds in the skull. It might have died, it might not have, but either way the others descend on it, and he gets to sprint away. 

Without a weapon. _God_ he’s an idiot. He casts a glance back, but all he sees is Cthulhu slowly rolling over the squabbling pack of hounds. He’ll have to go without until Cthulhu leaves and he can come back to retrieve it. Until then, idle hands are the devil’s playthings, so he gets to the next tree and pulls himself up. Even though it’s wet, he climbs it with ease, though not without stabbing pain. 

That’s for later. Right now, he has a tentacle snail thing to escape. He snaps a branch off, because anything is better than nothing, and _everything_ can be deadly if you use it right. New hounds are already gathering below him. From tree to tree. 

Howls ring out below him. They’re hunting him, like they have ever since Thomas read “White Fang” when he was just a _little_ too young for it. It’d been a surprise the first night, but now it was part of the routine. 

He hasn’t seen Kiche yet. 

The one with a red coat, made of blood. The one who seems more sentient, makes plans that he _swears_ are above wolf capability. She’s not the leader, per se, that goes to the one who could walk on two paws to catch his feet as he scrambles past on the branches above. That one, Faolan, was always at the head of the pack, despite his warped front paw. He hasn’t seen Faolan either. 

It’s familiar, but it’s a feeling he hates. He’s the prey now. Like a squirrel. Or an infected rabbit. Someone from the pack leaps up, manages to grab onto the branch that was one below his. They fall back to the ground with a stick in their eye, and the pack feasts as he continues on. Soon the snarling is far behind him, and he straddles the branch and takes a second to breathe. 

All of his muscles burn, and even though he takes slow, deep breaths, he doesn’t get any air. There’s venom coursing through him, he can feel it’s map on the inside of his skin, when they peel it off for the autopsy they’ll find the marks it makes. It’s only been a couple of hours. Thomas won’t wake up for another two, at least. 

Unless he… does something. The thoughts are still there, lurking beneath his skin, and if he wants he could turn them around. Force them to haunt Thomas instead of him, give them an outlet and save himself from a pack of wolves and an octopus snail and the ghouls and dead bodies that try to steal his body and make him watch despicable things. He just has to embrace them. 

He can already hear panting and barks behind him. He can feel Kiche’s far too human eyes on him. He can see the misshapen, their legs orientated in a way between human and animal that leads to a gait worse than his sleeping schedule. The lack of his morning star is suddenly all too apparent, his side is burning and every twitch sends cold fire into his nerves. Scratches cover his back, his stomach, his face, his bitten foot refuses to move, all the other nips and bumps and broken skin he’d forgotten about ooze back into his skin now that adrenaline isn’t pushing him to move. 

He’s so tired. And hungry. He’s dirty and wet and normally he loves it. Normally being actually dirty makes him forget that even when he scrubs his skin until it bleeds, he can’t feel clean. Now it’s just miserable. It’s cold and hot at the same time, and the pack is getting closer. He still can’t breathe. 

Just listen to them. Just give them a couple of seconds, minutes, an hour at most, and it’ll all fade away. Just once, just let us out once and we can fix it. It’s what they promise all the time, and he pushes them away as long as he can each time they speak. He knows he’ll give in eventually. And they’re not different than him, they’re the same, he’s just the one that tries to keep them from hurting Thomas.

It’s one night. The dogs are beneath him. He wants to run, but his energy is gone. It won’t hurt Thomas. It’s just showing Thomas something of his, _forcing_ him to actually give any sort of shit about him, and Logan said it himself, Thomas will be fine if he just acknowledges it and moves on. 

The others will get mad at him later. 

If he doesn’t do it, he won’t be there later. 

They’d like that better. 

He doesn’t want to die like this. 

_Move_

He inhales, exhales, and _screams._

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okayyyy we all lived through it huh?  
> At least I get to have fun with the next couple of chapters, 9 in particular.  
> Thanks for reading!


	8. Like music to my ears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas has entered the fight!  
> Virgil has left the counter!  
> Patton is here to be fatherly!  
> Logan is totally not a hypocrite!  
> Janus is lying to himself!  
> Roman is not getting out of bed!  
> Remus is a mess!
> 
> everyone has joined the battle!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uhhhhokayyy   
> I do not think there are any particular warnings?   
> Everything Janie says that's in italics should be a lie, some of them are a little hard to understand I guess? I should put those in the end notes and if I don't then feel free to call me out. 
> 
> Welcome to the land of e'rybody gets some angst! Not just remus angst, oh no, we gon get a lil Virgie angst, some Daddy angst, some Nerd angst, a slice of Snake angst, some Creative Bish angst, and a weee bit of Thomas angst!
> 
> I love these characters I swear.

Thomas jumps awake when he hears the sound of a scream.

He’s not going to get anymore sleep tonight.

* * *

Virgil jumps awake when he hears the sound of a scream.

His heart jumps out of his chest in turn, and his stomach jumps into his throat. 

Fight’s the instinct that kicks in first. He’s on his feet in less than a second, his hoodie forgotten. He makes it to the door, down the stairs, and into the common room before he realizes.   
  
The screaming hadn’t stopped, but it wasn’t even in the lightside. He’s the only one down in the common room, even though he can hear doors upstairs opening. No, the screaming was behind another door.   
  


The door to the darkside.    
  


_ Deceit _ had moved in, despite his and Roman’s best efforts. There was only one person left in the darkside now.    
  


Remus.    
  


He’s back up the stairs in a flash, pushing past a concerned Patton and a groggy Logan. The door to his room slams behind him. He’s back in the bed in a heartbeat, hoodie on and weighted blanket on his shoulders, but then he rises and starts pacing, blanket still resting on his back.

He’s  _ fine _ . He pretends he’s talking about himself, that he’s not worried at all.    
  


Worry turns to a rising anger when he starts to feel them leaking through.    
  


Fucking thoughts. Remus is doing it on purpose. Remus is having a fucking tempertantrum because Remus can’t get his head around the fact that no one wants to deal with his stupid bullshit and lewd comments and pranks that could  _ kill _ someone. 

Some part of him recognizes that Remus might not be able to control it, just like Virgil himself. He can’t control his anxiety, maybe Remus can’t control his thoughts.    
  


That part is pushed to the back when the thoughts turn to images, notably one involving Roman and himself in a risque situation, and he kicks the wall and cusses until something in him says _Language!_ just like Patton. He groans and falls back onto the bed.   
  
What had Logan said? Repression didn’t help. Just acknowledge and ignore. He’s sure as hell acknowledged, now just… Ignore. Easy enough. 

Far from easy. Far, far from easy. He holds himself back as long as he can before he starts trying to smash the thoughts, smash the images of blood and people Thomas loves. That familiar feeling is constricting his chest, and he can try to ignore it, but right now he just needs it to stop.    
  


Stop for just a second so he can  _ breathe. _ He lasts for an almost impressive amount of time before he starts screaming back, in his own way.    
  


Quiet, persistent, everything wrong with this. If he passes it on it gives him a second to breathe, and he’s suffocating on his own nerves. He’ll just give Thomas enough to let him suck in a quick breath, and then he’ll take it back.   
  
He does it, and manages to suck in air, but the panic rises faster, and he can’t breathe again, so he sends Thomas just a little more, just another breath. 

He’s not going to get anymore sleep tonight. 

* * *

Patton jumps awake when he hears the sound of a scream.

He fumbles with his glasses, sticks them on his face, and pulls himself out of bed, cracking his back as he did. He’s still sore, and he probably needs to stretch more, but one of his kiddos is hurt!

He doesn’t bother changing out of his onesie as he shambles his way to the door and out of it. It opens to the hallway, and he meets eyes with Logan before Virgil rushes past them both, causing him to take a startled step back. 

Virgil’s door slams shut before he can ask any questions, and he wants to go ask what’s wrong, who hurt his strange dark son. Someone’s still screaming, though, and it sounds like it’s coming from the common room. He manages to catch Logan’s eyes again, and also manages to hold back a squeak when he notices that Logan’s w _ earing a onesie! _

Logan raises an eyebrow at him, probably noticing his restrained adoration, but also offers a comforting nod that eases his frayed fatherly feelings. Logan’s the one who leads the way down the stairs, but Patton isn’t even a step behind, which is probably why they both keep tripping up and almost falling down the stairs. They make it down safely, though. 

Nothing seems wrong in the living room. That’s more worrying than something being wrong, because someone’s clearly hurt and if he doesn’t know how they’re hurt he can’t help at all. He dashes to the kitchen, just to check, but it’s empty too. 

He frowns, and heads back to the commons, mouth open to ask Logan if he knew anything, and freezes.    
  


Logan’s standing right in front of the door to the darkside, and it quickly becomes apparent that’s where the screaming is from but… Janus is with them now! They’d accepted him because Janus was right, and now everyone was on the lightside!

The scream is still going, and there’s only one person it could be. 

Remus.

He’d be lying if he said the thought of it didn’t make his skin crawl. He loved his kiddos, he really did, and every side was one of his kiddos!

But Remus still scared him. Remus was… Remus. Something inside him screamed  _ bad wrong _ at the mention of his name, something that was... all of him. But Remus wasn’t  _ bad _ , it was just his… Ideas! No, that sounded… wrong. 

_ but it was right. _

He’s stopped from pursuing that idea when he feels them. Thoughts. Thoughts that made his skin crawl and his heart burst out of his chest and he wants to be strong, but he needs to feel safe right now, safe from this awful part of Thomas- it’s not Thomas’s fault but it’s still him- and he finds himself in his room, under piles of blankets clutching Thomas’s childhood stuffed animals.   
  
It helps, for a little, until the thoughts, which had just been words, awful, awful words, turned into a stream of images and actions, flowing through his mind, particularly one that has his strange dark son and the magnificent, wonderful, and handsome Roman who had to _know_ that he still loved him. It drags an indignant squeak out of him, and he huddles closer to the blanket and prays that it stops soon, because he can’t. 

He’s supposed to just… see them, and ignore them, but it’s so hard when they’re right there, so hard to not just push them down. It’s a method that works for him, helps him get rid of yucky feelings so he can focus on making sure the others are alright, and maybe it would help with this.    
  


He loves Logan, just like all his kiddos, but this isn’t something he can just ignore, so he pushes them as far away from him as he can. 

He’s not going to get anymore sleep tonight.

* * *

Logan jumps awake when he hears the sound of a scream.

He’s not startled. Merely curious. He’s also not worried. No, merely cognizant of the fact that anything detrimental to a side’s health is also detrimental to Thomas’ continued well-being, despite them being but manifested forms to enact various roles of the human psyche. 

Thomas’s sleep schedule being disrupted is also detrimental to Thomas’ health. He would thank the other sides to keep that in mind before frolicking around the ‘Mind palace’ at unnatural hours of the night, for a human at least. Of course, the other sides would be hard pressed to burden themselves with keeping his advice in mind when making potentially risky decisions. 

That alone  makes him want \- gives him reason to refrain from offering assistance to whichever denizen of Thomas’ mind has found themselves in presumably some form of peril. Such an asinine response would do no good for Thomas, however, and as Logic, it is his responsibility to offer advice when it is desired, and he must at least gather intel on what has transpired. Even if he will get turned back by their obstinate and obtuse world views. 

As such, he pulls himself up from his bed. Although it would be more optimal for him to be able to spend the hours of the night arranging schedules and further organizing Thomas’ stored information so it could be easily accessed, it would further add to Thomas’ troubles getting to sleep, and likely decrease his own productivity, even though he was a figment, as the others. 

No sooner than him placing his glasses on his face and opening his door does he get figuratively swept away by Virgil’s rushing from the living room to his respective abode; after locking eyes with Patton, of course. The scream continues, displaying either an incredible lung capacity or incredible breath control. Clearly, it does not originate from Anxiety, though that does not mean Virgil was not a contributing factor in this incident. He’ll have to investigate that further after the incident has been dealt with. 

He meets eyes with Patton once more, taking in the father figment’s worried expression and bedraggled appearance. The side’s expression is also searching, as though he expects something of Logan. Perhaps a peace offering, seeing as their conflict had yet to be truly resolved? He quirks an eyebrow at him.  It might be the onesie he’d worn that evening.

He’s loath to offer a quick nod, but he does, and a fraction of Patton’s worry seems to melt away; it feels like a conclusion to a discussion they’ve yet to have, and he hopes Patton does not assume all is forgotten and forgiven. Not for his own feelings, such as they are nonexistent, but simply because continued neglection of logic by the others- Thomas included- would undoubtedly have detrimental effects on Thomas’ life as a whole. As such, the situation must be resolved properly.

He lacks the capacity to be ‘jealous’ of them. 

He’s the one to first start heading down the stairs. Patton follows close behind, one might say  _ too _ close, as Patton keeps tripping the both of them up, and this night does not require the addition of more injuries, provided the event in question included some sort of injury. It certainly sounded like it did, as the screams continued until both he and Patton reached the living room.

Patton gave the place a good look before sprinting off to the kitchen. He must still be searching for the one screaming. Meanwhile, Logan has already deduced the issue. 

The screaming is coming from behind the darkside’s door. As both Janus and Virgil currently resided on the lightside, there was only one logical answer. 

Remus. 

While Remus getting harmed would also not be beneficial for Thomas’ health, he had good reason to discredit this as some sort of call for attention. However, Remus was no different than any of the other sides. If anything, Remus gave him more respect than all the others combined. 

It was likely nothing more than another bout of intrusive thoughts. Provided Patton and Virgil followed through with his advice, acknowledged and accepted the thoughts without judgement and without trying to push them away, and instead carried on, Thomas would be fine. 

It would still be prudent to check. He hears movement behind him, glances back to see Patton has returned. He turns back to the door.   
  
Thoughts begin to enter his head. He knows they’re not his, and that they aren’t real. He acknowledges them, accepts that they are here, and goes on. There’s more movement behind him, and he barely catches sight of Patton running back up the stairs. He simply sighs. He’s given them all he can. He’s given them the tools that allow for them to weather this without any negative effects. Now it is figuratively in their hands. 

He takes a step closer to the door, and knocks succinctly. It garners no response, but that comes as no surprise. He knocks once more. 

“Remus?” No answer. 

“Remus, I simply need to know if you are unharmed.” There’s still no reply, so he tries the handle. Locked. Seeing as he has no reason to believe Remus is harmed, he has no reason to breach Remus’ privacy. 

Thomas is already awake. He doesn’t let his gait as he walks up the stairs be affected by the image of Virgil and Roman in an act of debauchery that flaunts across his vision. He acknowledges and accepts and continues. He’s in his room quickly, and almost goes to lay back in his bed. He catches the sight of his desk.    
  


Thomas is already awake, and likely wouldn’t be going to sleep soon. There would be no further detriment if he was to take this opportunity to work. 

He’s in his usual garb quickly, once the decision is made. 

He’s not going to get anymore sleep tonight.

* * *

Janus jumps awake when he hears the sound of a scream.

It’s  _ absolutely _ a new feeling. It feels like every single night he wakes up to a crash or a screech and a certain someone covered in blood, his own or someone else’s. Before he even opens his eyes, he knows who it is. 

Remus.

It  _ doesn’t  _ send a bolt of guilt through his stomach. No, he feels fine, thank you.  _ He stands up, stretches, and tries not to smile.  _

This is the only way to keep Thomas safe. Stay here, and convince the others to let Remus in. It’s the only way to make sure that everyone can contribute. It means he needs to move slow, be careful, and, as his nature hisses at him when he tries to will himself to stand up, it means he needs to stay here and be trustworthy.

He understands their reservations. He shares some of them. Remus is so… much. He can feel the pull of his job, even now, and he’s sure it feels much the same for Patton, for Virgil, even if slightly different. It’s an instinct that calls for safety, for protecting yourself above others, and it leaves no room for discussion or compromise. 

He’s self-preservation. And all of them are Thomas’s self. All of them need to have an equal say, need to be safe.    
  


He’s repression. He needs to keep it locked away until Thomas can address it, correctly this time.    
  


He’s a shield. He needs to make sure that everyone is safe from Remus, that Remus is safe from everyone, that Remus is safe from himself. 

He’s a means to an end. He needs to remove the problem by any means necessary, and the problem right now is Remus.

He's denial. He hasn’t done anything wrong, and since nothing is wrong, there’s nothing that’s hurting him, or Thomas. 

None of his jobs agree with each other. Each calls for a different course of action, just like they do when Remus comes to him in the middle of the night and he’s bleeding, bleeding too much and he gives vague answers that don’t taste like lies and  _ make sense _ . 

He needs to do all of them at once. And that means he can’t do any of them. 

He starts  _ laughing _ . He  _ loves  _ it, and he wants to  _ keep laughing _ because it makes him  _ forget _ that he’s  _ perfect _ , and  _ reliable _ , and  _ protected  _ everyone. 

He can’t be honest when he tells them Remus isn’t dangerous. He can lie and say he’d never harm them. He knows Remus wouldn’t want to harm them. That would be truth, but saying he’d never act on his thoughts would fill Janus’s mouth with the tart taste of falsehoods.    
  


Remus tries. Remus tries, but he’s dangerous. He’s gruff and harsh and while sometimes it feels like he has the capacity to be smooth, soft, and kind, it always gets washed away in screams. 

Remus doesn’t want help. Every time Remus actually  _ asks _ for help, it’s tinged with an off flavor he can’t quite place that shows up so often in Remus’ words. It’s at the center of a plea, and frosts the edges of explanations. It reminds him of protection, sometimes, and other times of shame, but it shifts. 

It’s confusing, like everything about Remus. Exhausting, like everything about Remus. Each verbal exchange is like a game of chess, Remus doesn’t know the rules and yet Remus wins, every time. He asks for an explanation for what tore his arm off, he gets a response like _Fear_ or _Jack London_ , which isn’t _wrong_ but it isn’t the truth.   
  
Yet Remus also manages to overshare in the same conversations. He’s unpredictable, in a way that makes it feel like Janus is taking care of a five year old too intelligent for their own good, who knows how to make an electric socket explode with a fork but not why he shouldn’t do it.   
  
It’s like Remus is broken, just like he is. You can feel that Remus is half of a whole. Roman has the same effect, but not nearly to the same amount. You took one apart and you somehow got three-fourths and two-fifths. What would Plato make of it? They’re both broken.

He runs his ungloved fingers over the scales that mark him as defective. He  _ loves _ them, like he  _ loves _ his fangs and his eye and his tongue, his ability to taste lies and truths, his automatic manipulation of everything he can get his hands on. 

Thoughts start to roll into his mind, courtesy of Remus. He’s used to them, but they still spark fear. That’s fine. He relishes in the brief flashes of pain and panic. It’s his own little punishment, and his way of saying  _ I’m sorry _ . 

He’s repression, and so he pushes down the flood of guilt, and closes his eyes again, pretends he’s  _ awake _ and pretends he didn’t hear anything. It’s easier. That’s what he is, the easiest way to end confrontations without having to escalate them or even solve the issue.    
  


He’s denial. He doesn’t see the image of Virgil and Roman. He didn’t hurt anyone.   
  
He’s hurt _everyone_ , and that’s in his nature, because he’s the self centered side by design. Roman may be the ego, but he’s the one who turns the tables on everyone around him to ensure he comes out on top. He’s the one who exploits until he reaches the end of whatever self-imposed gambit he’s involved in.   
  
He’s caught himself in a web of lies and hurt. It’s fitting. There’s no way to escape what he’s trapped himself in, and he deserves the fate he made for himself.   
  


He can rest easy knowing no matter what, he’ll see Remus again in hell. 

He’s  _ absolutely  _ going to get  _ plenty  _ more sleep tonight.

* * *

Roman jumps awake when he hears the sound of a scream.

Well, he jumps to attention, more like. He hadn’t really been asleep. He hadn’t slept for awhile. He’d certainly been in bed for a while, though. 

He’s just been staring at the wall. At first he’d been trying to cobble together new ideas, but he’d felt too tired to think, and too tired to sleep. So he’s just been staring at the wall. 

He feels hollow, but also full. Too full, laden down with weight that isn’t his, like he’s… He’s… 

Trying to come up with a metaphor just makes his headache worse. He just can’t think of anything, really. Probably has to do with the hollow feeling. Maybe it’d go away if he ate something. He knows Patton’s been putting plates of food just inside his door. He pretends he’s asleep everytime, because he really can’t handle Patton’s pity right now. 

He’s hollow, but he’s not hungry, so he stays in bed. Maybe he’s thirsty, but if he is he can’t feel it, so that doesn't drive him from his bed either. 

Oh. Someone’s still screaming. It’s got a familiar edge to it, sounds like his does. Which makes sense, because they’re all Thomas, but they all had different tones. Distinctive. That distinctiveness marks out exactly who’s it is. 

Remus.

He wishes he could feel something at that realization. Guilt or pain or anger. Maybe get annoyed that Remus is keeping him up, if he hadn’t been up already. He still just feels empty. He’d find it annoying, if he had the energy to be annoyed. He doesn’t even have the decency to be worried about his brother.    
  


That’s why he’s the villain. 

Everyone else would figure out why Remus was screaming, fix whatever the issue was. They’re probably already around him, asking what was wrong and how they could help. 

A selfish little part of him wishes they were crowding around him instead, asking him what was wrong and not letting him wiggle out of it with a blatant lie. Wishes that it was clear that he needed something, someone. 

People don’t worry about the villain. They worry about the hero.   
  
Janus is the new hero. 

If there was one thing he did feel, it would be regret. Regret that he couldn’t keep his mouth shut or be nice. He had played the role of hero for so long, and it was ingrained in him. Beat down the villain, cut them down and make the threat disappear. Shoot verbal arrows at any chink he can find in their armor, because it made him feel better.    
  


He hadn’t expected an arrow to be fired at him. 

Heroes didn’t die. Heroes got up again, heroes persevered. Heroes didn’t go running to their room to pout and pout until someone forced them to pull it together. Heroes didn’t take advantage of the first weakness they could find. 

He’s not the hero, so he’s the villain. He’s the evil twin, so Remus must be the good one. And what did it say about him, when he was so evil that Remus, by comparison, was the good guy? 

He doesn’t want to think about that. He doesn’t want to nurse his wounds because a offhand comment had bruised him so much it hurt to move. He doesn’t want to think, he just wants to go away.    
  


That’s why he just pushes down the thoughts. They’re evil, vile, and they’re better than him, they’re good. Remus is good. These are good, compared to him. He doesn’t even flinch when an image of him and Virgil together ghosts over his vision. He doesn’t have the energy. 

He’s not going to get anymore sleep tonight.

* * *

Thomas jumps awake when he hears the sound of a scream. 

It’s not in his house, or in the world at all. He doesn’t know precisely  _ how _ he knows it, but he does. 

It doesn’t sound… normal. Not that any screams should be normal, it just seemed different. Like him. Like him but with a more manic edge, a lilting tone and cracks that split it into fractions and decimals. 

It’s in his head. He doesn’t know precisely  _ how _ he knows it, but he does. 

He knows exactly who it is. He doesn’t know precisely  _ how  _ he knows it, but he does.

Remus.

He’ll hold onto Logan’s advice. Acknowledge and ignore. Just like he’s ignoring the cold, mushy pit in his stomach, like it’s decomposing while inside him, the rot spreading from the inside out like his sins, until he’s a scarlet letter on his chest that tells everyone what secrets he hides. 

He doesn’t know where that came from. No, he knows exactly where that came from. Remus. 

He hates this. He hates this, and uses that mantra as a shield while he tries not to push down a flood of thoughts. This isn’t  _ him _ . He doesn’t want this, he wouldn’t hurt them, he loves them and he wants to keep them safe. 

Then thoughts turn to images. One of… Is that Virgil and Roman? He didn’t need to see that, thank you very much. One of Joan, blood streaming down from a hole in his skull, and when he looks down he sees he’s holding a bloody hammer. His mom, clutching at her neck as he tightens a rope around it.    
  


He can’t. He can’t ignore these, they’re too much, too much, and he can’t help desperately shoving them down, away. He wants them away. He wants them  _ gone _ .

He’s not going to get anymore sleep tonight.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cracks knuckles obnoxiously* aight here goes.   
> DeDe is our fav unintelligible snake boi, so here is a translation guide!   
> "He stands up, stretches, and tries not to smile."- roughly means 'He doesn't move, just curls up and tries not to cry.'  
> Laughing in italics always means crying, love is hate, awake is asleep, and the "He's *absolutely* going to get *plenty* more sleep tonight." is just literally every other segment end with a snakie spin on it.   
> I'm sorry if the pov segments are repetitive or confusing, it was an attempt to kinda highlight the fact that they're all the same damn person just different, and every one has the exact same order of events and the same 3 sentences. 
> 
> Everyone wants to follow Logan's advice, they really do, it's just hard sometimes. Like when you *know* picking at that scab will make it so much worse but like.... you pick at it anyways like a moron.
> 
> Feel free to point out any errors or stupidness you find, I simp for interaction.


End file.
